8/01/2001 @ 10:30AM

House Votes To Ban All Cloning

Soon it will probably be illegal to clone human embryos–whether to make babies or simply for medical research some scientists believe could be life saving. The House of Representatives passed a bill yesterday that would ban all human cloning and would prohibit doctors from importing any therapies created by using cloned human embryos.

President Bush has already thrown his support behind the complete ban. If the bill makes it through the Senate–which seems increasingly likely–it could push researchers out of the U.S. entirely. Almost no one supports using the technology to make babies. But some scientists fiercely defend therapeutic cloning, a kind of stem-cell therapy that would treat patients with cells genetically identical to their own.

“I expected more than a rushed two-hour debate,” says
Michael
West
Michael West
, chief executive of
Advanced Cell Technology
, a Worcester, Mass.-based company that plans to use therapeutic cloning to treat diseases ranging from diabetes to heart disease to Parkinson’s. And it’s exactly this kind of work that links human cloning to the debate on embryonic stem cells.

Stem cells derived from human embryos can be coaxed to become any kind of human tissue–a property that in theory would allow doctors to replace damaged parts of the brain, liver, pancreas or heart as one would replace parts in a car. But a patient’s immune system might attack these cells if they are genetically different from his or her own.

Therapeutic cloning, however, provides a potential solution: An embryo would be cloned from one of the patient’s own cells and then destroyed when it’s a few days old to produce stem cells. These cells could be chemically guided to produce whatever bits of tissue needed replacement–insulin-producing cells for diabetics, specialized neurons for Parkinson’s disease, heart tissue.

Advanced Cell Technology is not alone in working with this technology.
Geron
, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based company that West founded and has since left, has been a pioneer in the field.
BioTransplant
, a Cambridge, Mass.-based company, has allied itself with
Stem Cell Sciences
, a therapeutic cloning company in Australia.

Therapeutic cloning research is allowed on a limited basis elsewhere in the world, including England. So if the Senate passes the bill, many researchers and companies may just pack up and leave.

“Even if our country banned cloning human embryos, other regions of the world will allow its continuance,” says BioTransplant CEO
Elliot
Lebowitz
Elliot Lebowitz
. “The world outside the U.S. represents a market at least as large as the domestic one and hence a worthwhile commercial opportunity.”

In the end, the House found the idea of researchers fleeing the United States less frightening than cloning embryos for research purposes. That fear was apparently enhanced by the fact that the embryos must be destroyed to create stem cells.

“Human beings should not be cloned to stock a medical junkyard of spare parts for experimentation,” House Majority Whip
Tom
DeLay
Tom DeLay
, a Texas Republican, said during the debate.

Lawmakers voted 265-to-162 to ban all cloning–after voting down 249-to-178 not to allow an amendment to the bill that would have allowed embryos to be cloned for a type of stem-cell research.

Scientists who believe that days-old embryos are not yet people have defended the therapy.
Rudolf
Jaenisch
Rudolf Jaenisch
, an MIT professor who passionately argues against cloning people, summed up their argument a month ago. “It is very clear what reproductive cloning is for: to make a person,” Jaenisch says. “With cell therapy, the intent is also very clear: not to make a person.”

For Geron and Biotransplant, keeping operations outside the United States will be relatively easy. Geron got its cloning technology by buying
Roslin Bio-Med
, a company spun off by the Scottish researchers who created Dolly the sheep, the first clone of an adult mammal, in 1997. It could easily move operations to Scotland. BioTransplants’ ally, Stem Cell Sciences, is already based in both Australia and Scotland.

Advanced Cell Technology might find a move a bit harder–it does not have well-established operations outside the U.S. But CEO West says he has no plans to leave the States just yet: “I trust the Senate to do the right thing,” West says.